I understand. What prevents you from disabling the -Werror flag on your build configuration? I don't see where's the big issue. We have already tens of flags to configure the build anyway.
I have been fixing every warning that I came across so far in the main platforms that I have access. I consider it a practice of leaving things cleaner than you find them, and would appreciate if everyone else would be a good citizen and do the same. Having to explicitly disable the flag for special cases like the one you mentionwould serve this purpose. Anway, I would be satisfied with at least having warnings as errors on CI. Regarding my development experience, I just try to make bona fide recommendations given that I worked (survived?) in C++ codebases with hundreds of developers that run successfully in the order of billions of devices. I'm sure you have your own bag of tricks. Please excuse me if my comments came across as questioning your development experience at any time. I have high regards for your development experience in any case. On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 4:55 PM, Chris Olivier <cjolivie...@gmail.com> wrote: > Pedro, > > i don’t know if you’ve ever done much development or not, but during > development, it’s quite common to comment out arbitrary lines of code, > create a variable only for debug inspection, or other things that will > generate warnings, but are actually intentional. causing a compile error i > this case would not be acceptable, in my opinion. > > as for the any compiler issue, if someone is using a newer gcc or clang, > and while it only has 2 new warning, they appear in 200 places, are you > saying it’s the responsibility of this poor community developer to fix all > of those warnings? or they can open up a JIRA to your team and you will fix > them? > > > On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 7:48 AM Marco de Abreu <marco.g.ab...@googlemail.com> > wrote: > >> So you're proposing to have a stage AFTER test execution which would report >> warnings as errors? While this is a good idea, I'm afraid that a fail-fast >> would also have its benefits - especially considering that compilation only >> takes a few minutes and consumes few resources while test execution takes >> up most of the time and is very costly. >> >> -Marco >> >> On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 4:11 PM, Barber, Christopher < >> christopher.bar...@analog.com> wrote: >> >> > Personally, I don’t like treating warnings as errors because it prevents >> > compilation from completing and causes you to lose any ability to test >> the >> > code and get any other information. Killing the build because of a failed >> > warning for something that might not matter means that you may not find >> out >> > about other important test failures until much later. Better to add a >> test >> > that grovels the build logs for warning messages and treat it as a test >> > failure. >> > >> > I also prefer to only enable exactly those warnings that truly matter. >> > >> > On 1/16/18, 8:23 AM, "Marco de Abreu" <marco.g.ab...@googlemail.com> >> > wrote: >> > >> > I'd vote for having warnings as errors only for CI but not in general >> > builds which are getting executed by users on their local machine. >> > Just in >> > case CI misses a warning due to a different version, this could >> block a >> > developer from compiling MXNet locally even though it might just be a >> > warning which is not critical enough (otherwise it would be an error) >> > to >> > justify blocking the compilation. In my opinion, it would be good if >> > we can >> > filter most warnings during PR-stage and risk that some are getting >> > into >> > the master branch due to a different compiler version. A reduction of >> > (for >> > example) 95% without risking to break the master branch on different >> > compilers is way better in my opinion than having a 100% coverage >> which >> > could block compilation - especially because we would only notice if >> a >> > user >> > tells us afterwards. >> > >> > -Marco >> > >> > On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 1:32 PM, Pedro Larroy < >> > pedro.larroy.li...@gmail.com> >> > wrote: >> > >> > > Hi Chris >> > > >> > > I get the rationale of the point you raise, but In my opinion, and >> > > considering the complexity of C++ and the potential for difficult >> and >> > > expensive to track bugs, I think this should be enabled by default >> > for >> > > both release and debug. A developer is free to disable warnings in >> > his >> > > own private branch, but I don't see what would be the benefit of >> > this. >> > > >> > > Regarding your second point, I think this is a minor issue which is >> > > outweighed by the benefits. In the case you propose, the author of >> a >> > > PR can easily fix a bunch of warnings when CI fails as usual. For >> > > example in case he gets one or two warnings that his version of the >> > > compiler didn't catch, or if she has an additional warning of some >> > > type with a different version of GCC / Clang. >> > > >> > > This has the objective to prevent warning inflation. In practice, a >> > > different version of GCC might produce just a couple of new warning >> > > types that will be easily fixable once we upgrade the compiler in >> CI. >> > > We also get the benefit of preventing warnings on the gcc versions >> > > that the author is using, in the case he has a different one. >> Another >> > > option is to enable warnings as errors only on CI. I would prefer >> to >> > > have it enabled by default, for correctness. As first time users >> are >> > > not likely to compile MXNet by themselves, and also considering the >> > > significant complexity of compiling MXNet from scratch for >> newcomers. >> > > >> > > In general, the compilers that we have running on CI should be our >> > > reference compilers. And for practical purposes, having no warnings >> > in >> > > those versions of Clang and GCC would be a positive step towards >> more >> > > code quality, clean compilation and a more mantainable code base. >> > > Once we have CI stable we can build a matrix of supported compilers >> > in >> > > the docs, as for example there are versions of GCC which are not >> > > supported by the nvidia tools. >> > > >> > > Pedro. >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 7:27 PM, Chris Olivier < >> > cjolivie...@gmail.com> >> > > wrote: >> > > > If enabled, it should only cause errors in Release builds, since >> > having >> > > > warnings in WIP code is not unusual. >> > > > >> > > > In addition, different developers use different gcc/clang >> > versions. Some >> > > > gcc versions, for instance, generate warnings where others do >> > not. It >> > > > would not be fair to render unbuildable a developer who is using >> a >> > newer >> > > > (or older) gcc version is different from CI. Can this argument >> be >> > tied >> > > to >> > > > a particular compiler/platform/version? >> > > > >> > > > On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 9:43 AM, Marco de Abreu < >> > > > marco.g.ab...@googlemail.com> wrote: >> > > > >> > > >> +1 >> > > >> >> > > >> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 6:27 PM, Pedro Larroy < >> > > >> pedro.larroy.li...@gmail.com> >> > > >> wrote: >> > > >> >> > > >> > Hi >> > > >> > >> > > >> > I would like to propose to compile in CI with warnings as >> > errors for >> > > >> > increased code quality. This has a dual purpose: >> > > >> > >> > > >> > 1. Enforce a clean compilation output. Warnings often indicate >> > > >> > deficiencies in the code and hide new warnings which can be an >> > > >> > indicator of problems. >> > > >> > >> > > >> > 2. Warnings can surface bugs as has happened before. >> > > >> > >> > > >> > While this might be impractical in all architectures, I would >> > propose >> > > >> > having the Linux and Clang build run without warnings in CI. >> > > >> > >> > > >> > I think we are very close to this as I personally have been >> > fixing >> > > >> > warnings in Linux and OSX / Clang. >> > > >> > >> > > >> > References: >> > > >> > >> > > >> > https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/9398 >> > > >> > >> > > >> > http://jenkins.mxnet-ci.amazon-ml.com/blue/ >> > organizations/jenkins/ >> > > >> > incubator-mxnet/detail/PR-9398/1/pipeline >> > > >> > >> > > >> > Pedro. >> > > >> > >> > > >> >> > > >> > >> > >> > >>
